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booksthatmatter89's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
informative
reflective
tense
slow-paced
4.5
The Warmth of Other Suns is a non-fiction story about the Great Migration, the greatest untold story of the 20th Century. Lasting from 1915 to 1970, it is the movement of 6 million blacks from America’s south to America’s west and north to escape the Jim Crow caste system. At the start of this movement, it was made up of individual families making the decision to resettle due to low wages, harsh treatment, and lack of job mobility, and to improve their lives and futures. The migration required great courage and had unforeseen consequences.
The book is an account of the true stories of three brave but typical migrants. Three black southerners who made the decision of their lives and followed three main streams of the migration: Ida Mae Brandon Gladney was a sharecropper’s wife who left Mississippi for Chicago; George Swanson Starling was a college student and citrus picker from Florida who headed to New York; and Robert Joseph Pershing Foster was a surgeon who served in the United States Army and then drove across the desert from Louisiana to California.
Having been a fan of Isabel Wilkerson’s other novel Caste, I was excited to see how she was able to tell this story. Wow! She was able to take so many hours of interviews to weave this incredible journey as if you were immersed along for the ride.
You don’t always hear these stories growing up in school, but this is the history that we can’t forget or let disappear. I highly suggest everyone take the time to pick up this story and let it alter your views of the south, salvers and origins of our
wordsofclover's review against another edition
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
4.5
This is a fantastic and engaging book about America's Great Migration in the 1900s as Black Americans left the Jim Crow South for new lives and better opportunities in the North. We follow three people's real stories - Ida Mae, George and Robert from three different Southern locations as they move themselves and their families and how their lives turn out in the North but they never lose their connection to the South.
I listened to this on audiobook and while it was a long listen, I throughly enjoyed it. As a non-American reader, I enjoyed learning more about this time in American history and this isn't something I had known about before though obviously we learn about the American Civil War and the US Civil Rights Movement in Irish education, this is a topic that is connected to these but its own story entirely. I found it interesting to see how the North wasn't automatically better for the migrants - while they escaped the suffocating Jim Crow of the South, they still faced and dealt with a lot of racial discrimination and divide in different ways in the North - and Northern cities such as Chicago and New York were forever changed after his migration as well in socio-economic and city division ways as well which was fascinating. It was also amazing to hear of some of the famous people who would never have been able to reach the heights they did if their parents or family members hadn't chosen to migrant to the North where they had the opportunities the did.
The care and detail put into the research for this book must have been immense and really commend the author for doing a stellar job - from the sounds of it, this book took a long time to research and write as she sat and talked to Ida Mae, George and Robert in the later years of their lives to understand their story and experiences better.
Highly recommend this!
I listened to this on audiobook and while it was a long listen, I throughly enjoyed it. As a non-American reader, I enjoyed learning more about this time in American history and this isn't something I had known about before though obviously we learn about the American Civil War and the US Civil Rights Movement in Irish education, this is a topic that is connected to these but its own story entirely. I found it interesting to see how the North wasn't automatically better for the migrants - while they escaped the suffocating Jim Crow of the South, they still faced and dealt with a lot of racial discrimination and divide in different ways in the North - and Northern cities such as Chicago and New York were forever changed after his migration as well in socio-economic and city division ways as well which was fascinating. It was also amazing to hear of some of the famous people who would never have been able to reach the heights they did if their parents or family members hadn't chosen to migrant to the North where they had the opportunities the did.
The care and detail put into the research for this book must have been immense and really commend the author for doing a stellar job - from the sounds of it, this book took a long time to research and write as she sat and talked to Ida Mae, George and Robert in the later years of their lives to understand their story and experiences better.
Highly recommend this!
Content Warnings
Moderate: Racism
Minor: Drug abuse and Miscarriage
helen_is's review against another edition
I thought this was interesting but it repeated itself so many times, & the three stories mixed with the social commentary interrupted themselves so often, I lost track of all the threads. Needed a really good edit.
thechanelmuse's review against another edition
5.0
“I began this work because of what I saw as incomplete perceptions, outside of scholarly circles, of what the Great Migration was and how and why it happened, particularly through the eyes of those who experienced it. Because it was so unwieldy and lasted for so long, the movement did not appear to rise to the level of public consciousness that, by any measure, it seemed to deserve.”
The feeling this nonfiction work gives you from beginning to end... I don’t even know if one can properly review this book. It’s a wealth of important information and history in abundance that takes you on an epic, radically transformative, eye-opening journey through the lives of three main subjects you feel you know personally (they remind me of members of my family who too were a part of The Great Migration), countless other stories from other people included throughout, and so much historical data that fills the pages. Thank you, Isabel Wilkerson for not only writing this book but for writing it in such a way.
The feeling this nonfiction work gives you from beginning to end... I don’t even know if one can properly review this book. It’s a wealth of important information and history in abundance that takes you on an epic, radically transformative, eye-opening journey through the lives of three main subjects you feel you know personally (they remind me of members of my family who too were a part of The Great Migration), countless other stories from other people included throughout, and so much historical data that fills the pages. Thank you, Isabel Wilkerson for not only writing this book but for writing it in such a way.
laura_corsi's review against another edition
4.0
Wilkerson takes the reader on an amazing journey showing us a glimpse of what it was like to be part of the Great Migration of African Americans from the Jim Crow South to the greater freedoms of the North and West. Stunning in its scope, this book preserves the oral histories of 3 members of the migration. Beautifully done.
superdewa's review against another edition
5.0
What a wonderful book, combining history I really benefited from learning with lovingly told stories. I became attached to the three lives she follows in the book and have been crying the last few days as their stories came to an end. This is exactly the kind of book I like: an entertaining story combined with learning.
sarec's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
informative
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
5.0